India – II. The Culture Shock of Rajasthan

Aside from the cities of Delhi and Agra, the state of Rajasthan is the most popular region for international travelers visiting India. The state is dotted with magnificent royal palaces and forts dating back hundreds of years — all featuring ornate and mesmerizing architecture. Rajasthan felt like my first real foray into India, with the quieter mountains of Himachal Pradesh seemingly a world away. Don’t let my photos fool you, I found budget traveling in Rajasthan to be incredibly taxing, with the hassles greatly overshadowing the tangible rewards.

I came to Rajasthan in a bit of a hurry from Daramshala, taking an overnight bus to Delhi and then another six hour bus to the city of Jaipur. I did this because the Diwali festival was starting on the night of my arrival, and Jaipur was said to be a top location to witness the festivities. Known as the Festival of Light, Diwali takes place over five days and is marked by decorative lights and extensive fireworks. In Jaipur I mistakenly booked a hostel that was a considerable walk outside of the walled “Pink City” area (where most of the historical sites await), but anyhow I still had a nice night with the people I met there.

Along with seven European travelers from the hostel I took part in a Diwali ceremony with our hosts. This involved making offerings to the Hindu Gods for good luck and fortune. Imagine us, a bunch of clueless westerners sitting on the floor overtop of a white cloth — the manager of our hostel chanting in a hushed tone, then inviting each of us one by one to offer specs of rice, spice, and water to small dolls representing the Goddess Lakshmi and Lord Ganesha.

Later we all Uber’d to an unassuming building with a lively 10th floor rooftop restaurant. Fireworks exploded in the distance all around us, and it felt like an early New Year’s Eve celebration. Plus, because we had two rowdy Irish girls there it was almost mandatory to drink. At one point we had three huge beer flights on our table (meanwhile the Indian people around us enjoyed their more traditional hookahs).

The next day exploring Jaipur is where the real cultural assault of India bore down on me. That morning started nicely with a long walk to the Pink City, towards the iconic Hawa Mahal. If the Taj Mahal is to India in general, then the Hawa Mahal is to Rajasthan. It’s the most beautiful and yet bizarre structure, with a faint lack of symmetry that drove the visual artist in me insane. Most people there took selfies just below in the street, but I wanted a straight on view for my photos. I found just that at a rooftop cafe across the street. Despite the bustling traffic below, there was no-one at the cafe. So, I took a table facing straight at the Hawa Mahal — an experience I definitely won’t forget!

Later that morning I wandered the backstreet markets nearby that supposedly sell silver jewelry, however most shops were closed. I went on past piles of Diwali-remnant garbage, with monkeys, cows, and dogs feasting on leftover food items. (Diwali aside, I found the trash situation was jaw-droppingly horrible all throughout India, a product of poor education and a lack of garbage bins).

That afternoon I visited the Albert Hall Museum. This was an excellent place to view traditional South Asian pottery, but at mid-day it was so crowded with Indian tourists that the exhibits were hard to enjoy. Not only did I have to budge around just to get a glimpse, but I also had children and teenage boys interrupting me with the typical questions they ask of foreigners: “which country?” & “can I get a selfie?” (These questions would continue through the rest of my stay in India). Leaving the museum area I nearly walked directly into the path of an Indian guy’s projectile spit. Indian men love to spit, and they often lack the inclination to check who might be beside them.

Later on my way to the popular Nahargarh Fort I took an Uber motorcycle ride and unknowingly dropped my sunglasses off of my hat en route. So that’s what the little crash was that I heard! (I murmured to myself afterwards). Having to adjust my eyes to the fierce afternoon sun I took a brief hike up to the fort. There was a flood of more questions and tuk-tuk offers from the locals. When at a point I sat briefly along the hill to write in my journal, I quickly found myself with an audience peering over my shoulder — I’ve never had more people mesmerized about my journaling, it was as if they’d never seen English, or anything written on paper.

The fort was very cool, and it was the only one I’d visit where you could wander freely, opposed to in a one-way sequence of rooms. These forts are a beacon of Rajasthan’s appeal, but as a young foreign solo traveler the questioning and stares from locals often ruined the experience.

That night the pedestrian and vehicular traffic in the city center was so bad that Uber wouldn’t work, and not wanting to pay for an inflated tuk-tuk I walked the long, crowded distance back to my hostel, hugging the sides of the street to avoid being pummeled by vehicles.

My second stop in Rajasthan was the small, yet still very busy (and loud) city of Pushkar. This is where each year a massive camel fair takes place, bringing in people from all over South Asia and elsewhere in the world (the festival was to begin a week after my visit, and from one of the hills in town I could see tents being set up in the otherwise empty, arid fields). Even ahead of the festival camels could be seen pulling wagons of tourists through the back streets of town.

Pushkar was both highly spiritual and appealing to western desires. There are 200+ temples scattered about town, and the scenic Pushkar lake is lined with Ghats where Indian families bring the ashes of loved ones (along with offerings to the gods). With the lakefront being such a holy space and restrictive of shoes, I otherwise chose to view it from the trendy rooftop cafes nearby. Restaurants in Pushkar do not serve eggs or meat, but vegetarian cuisine is already so common in India that I almost didn’t notice.

My favorite part of Pushkar was the jewelry shopping. It was as if every other business in town sold silver, something I couldn’t say about the other cities on my trip. I spent an entire afternoon here searching for a silver ring, eventually returning to the first shop I visited to purchase a beautiful lotus-shaped ring with a labradorite stone. Otherwise here I enjoyed the colorful yet hazy sunsets, plus the relative peace & quiet to be found at different hilltop temples.

My third stop in Rajasthan was the large, and rather unappealing city of Jodhpur. Aside from some of the worst traffic I’ve seen, I found the restaurants and guesthouses lacked proper hospitality, despite being home to one of the state’s most impressive forts. Here I stayed in a guesthouse in a prime location just below the famous Mehrangarh Fort. During my stay I was constantly taken aback by the relatively bland food, lackluster rooms, and the sense of difficultly that marked every interaction I had with staff (the morning I left it took an hour to sort out the bill for the laundry I had done).

While in Jodhpur I increasingly came to see modern India for what it really is — a largely ugly place with a relatively colorful history and culture that for the western traveler can feel like an absolute burden to explore. The population has grown to such an extreme that most cities of any size are jammed with traffic and animals, leaving introverted foreigners like myself searching for any sort of respite (i.e. a clean, beautiful coffee shop or the quiet of a hotel room). At first I thought I liked the chaos of India, but I found that every possible issue was amplified more than anywhere I’d been. I began to think that traveling here is probably best done in groups and with luxury accommodations. It didn’t surprise me that I often saw clusters of older western tourists, many on what looked to be package deal photography trips, wandering around with huge cameras. More-so to my point, even The Broke Backpacker lists India as one of their worst places to budget travel.

With just two real highlights in both the Mehrangarh Fort and the Jaswant Thada, I left Jodhpur and arrived to the comparatively prettier city of Udaipur. For me, this was Rajasthan’s one true redeemer. It had multiple lakes, beautiful inner-city hotels and hostels, palaces spread around the surrounding hills, and even a couple of scenic islands with fantastical looking accommodations. Though also quite large and busy, the hospitality here more-so matched the amount of tourism on display. Here I could find a quality coffee shop, plus an inexpensive but tasty restaurants to return to again and again.

My hostel had numerous balconies where I enjoyed the morning sunshine and did some yoga. I’d wake up at 6:00 AM and go to the roof — there I’d get maybe five minutes of pure silence before the sound of car horns began for the day, as if on a schedule. Udaipur wasn’t without the noises and smells that’d bothered me elsewhere in Rajasthan, but at least I had plenty of nice things to look at. There was even some fantastic shopping. At one shop I bought the cutest miniature silver Indian elephant pendant, and at another I picked up one of the “tiny” paintings that are popular here.

On my last morning in Rajasthan I visited the City Palace Museum. Like the museum in Jaipur this too was also frustratingly crowded, but at this point I thought what else is new? Something that really bothered me with historical sites in India is that prices for foreigners are jacked up to sometimes 5x of what the locals are asked to pay. And instead of coming alone or with a friend, you’ll find entire Indian families of 7+ people visiting together. While this is not innately an issue, there is also no attempt at crowd control. And so, at the city palace museum I often found myself stuck in a queue just to get from one exhibition area to another. There was also a brief power outage, so that was fun.

On my last afternoon for sunset I found a secluded hiking trail above the city. There, to my amazement I had the space to myself. I put in my AirPods, and threw on some golden-hour vibe music to drown out what car noises I could still hear in the distance.

I came to accept that I didn’t enjoy Rajasthan. In fact, it may have been my least favorite bit of all my travels anywhere in the world. Furthermore I struggled to find gratitude for the experience. I think travel that’s void of gratitude is perilous in the moment and not always worth it. I’m already looking back on the photos with a certain fondness, but I hope that in the future I’ll be able to positively reminisce on the rest of it … the noises, smells, attention and all.

Next post: Mumbai, Chennai, and Pondicherry